Is this a scam?

[walshydub]

I am selling a set of wheels for my father-in-law over ebay. I received a message from an ebay user asking if he could buy them off ebay.
He sent me his email, so i emailed him back with contact details for the seller to arrange viewing etc.
I then got another email back saying he was abroad and he would be sending me money over paypal for the wheels and a courier would be arranged to pick them up. I agreed to this, seemed legit. He was willing to pay the full asking price + the paypal surcharge.

Then it started getting weird, he then sent another email saying the shipping company wouldn't accept his credit card & the only way he could get money to them was through Western Union. But he reckons his nearest office is 8hrs away so he would send me the extra $1000 through paypal for me to pay the shipping company through Western Union at the Post Office.
At this point i started smelling a rat so i sent him back an email saying i wasn't willing to take on this extra responsibility and he should arrange a different shipping company. This morning i received an email from "Paypal" saying;

Hello my email,

We are contacting you regarding your Transaction with Sean Mcglynn. We are still expecting to receive the necessary Western Union Information from you, and you are required to send the Western Union information to us within the next 24HRS or the necessary Legal Action would be taken against you.

You are required to send to us the Western Union Information Stated Below for Verification:

(1) Sender's Name;
(2) Receiver's Name;
(3) MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number);
(4) Amount Sent;
(5) Western Union Receipt.

So you should go ahead and send the $ 1,000.00 AUD within the next 24HRS, and we shall be expecting to receive the Western Union Information from you as soon as possible. You can contact us if you have any question(s).

Sincerely,

A. Williams,
The PayPal Team

The email is from service@paypal.com but no Paypal logo's appear on the email and when i press show details it says the email was sent from sify.com.
I have told him repeatedly to 'buy it now' on ebay before i do anything. He hasn't and no money has appeared in my paypal account.
I am very suspicious now but he has my email & my paypal email. A scammer couldn't do anything with this info, could they?
I have told him i want nothing to do with the Western Union transfer and i am thinking about blocking his emails. What more can i do to avoid exposure to a potential scam.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Yep- one of the most common scams. It's often done with cars as well...

Drop it like a hot spud

[walshydub]

Yep- one of the most common scams. It's often done with cars as well...

Drop it like a hot spud

Cool cheers. Just out of interest, how do they get money out of you?

[Spyda]

Yeah scam. Ebay tells you not to use Western Union because its anonymous.

Do what you can to report him or the situation to paypal and ebay. I know ebay does what it can to block them and black list them and paypal wouldnt like it much either.

[ian]

Yes my brother was selling a car on Ebay and got the same run around, except he was buying it for his father and he was stuck on an oil rig some where , but it was the same scam.

[walshydub]

Yeah scam. Ebay tells you not to use Western Union because its anonymous.

Do what you can to report him or the situation to paypal and ebay. I know ebay does what it can to block them and black list them and paypal wouldnt like it much either.

Will do. The original email came from an ebayer with a legit looking account, so i guess it had been hacked. I sent an email back to him saying i knew it was a scam and told them to F**k off & blocked their email. Should be the end of it.
The old adage, if its too good to be true, it is!

[Jarred]

SCAM!

I've seen a few similar ones, through bike and carsales before. It's always "I'm overseas at the moment, but I'll give you a link to a dogey paypal and steal your money" kinda thing

[noone]

Do forward this to EBay so they can shut down the user, if you get on it quick, less chance of others getting scammed too.

[walshydub]

Do forward this to EBay so they can shut down the user, if you get on it quick, less chance of others getting scammed too.

I've emailed Paypal, but can't get onto ebay as it's blocked at work.

[gareth_oau]

I understand the reason they use paypal, from what I have heard:

they pay payal, which goes into your account
you release the goods
once they receive the goods, they lodge a dispute with paypal.
paypal reverses the transaction, and if you have no credit on there, they charge your credit card.
buyer disapears with your wheels

seems paypal is flawed - if anything, the money should go into escrow whilst the dispute is assesed, not given back to the buyer